No More Obese Staffies: Free Feeding Vs Scheduled Meal Times

Is your Staffy trying to trick you into believing that they need MORE food? SBTs will eat as much as you let them unless they know instinctively that when they feel hungry, food is there. You need to train Staffies to trust you to feed them.

We’ve all seen obese Staffordshire Bull Terrier pups. It ain’t a pretty sight. Fat, slow, and slobbering as they prowl around scavenging for more food. Your natural instinct is to keep your dog at a healthy weight, regardless of how much exercise they get.

Now, there will be people who have pups who just don’t know how much exercise they really need, regardless of their feed. You can feed pups on a scheduled diet, yet they might still wind up overweight if they aren’t exercised enough.

How you feed your dog has to do with your supervision and their tendency.

Every dog has their own personality traits

A dog’s appetite is much like ours. Sit me down to a trifle or a platter of cheesecake, I’m gonna eat it all in one sitting. No question. Your dog is the same. Sit a plate of food down, and they’ll gulp down as much as they can until they can’t.

Free feeding vs scheduled feeding for SBTs

Scheduled feeding vs free feeding is determined by the amount of exercise your Staffy gets. Like all dogs, Staffies will eat for nutritional needs, OR from boredom. Active Staffies are better suited to free feeding.

Determining whether to free feed a Staffy or schedule meal times

You shouldn’t let your dog eat to the extent that they can’t move. That’s crazy. It’s like me at a buffet. I paid for it so I’m having it. Everything, ‘til my belly’s bursting out of my trousers (then, loosen the belt to go again). Dogs don’t have that instinct – until they do, which is what your training for feeding habits is about.

Let them graze on their food or gulp the lot down in a oner?

It depends on what you NEED them to do!

A dog’s eating habits are dependent upon your availability!

Dogs are intuitively scavengers. Some dog owners will debate that dogs evolve from wolves; therefore, they are primarily predatory animals. Not true. Domesticated dogs, (which are the tamed dogs that you and I have), are domesticated to the extent that they don’t NEED to scavenge for food. They learn – through a routine – that their food is there at this time or that, or in the case of free-fed dogs, whenever they feel peckish.

Should you let your dog graze, or feed them on a schedule?

The method you use for feeding is based on how your dog is from when they are pups. Pups are best trained to graze, whereas, rescue dogs that have been raised to be fed on a schedule will devour everything that you put down to them unless they have been previously trained otherwise (rare). It’s a survival instinct.

If a dog knows (and trusts) that when they are hungry, they can go to a designated space and have food available, they will not devour the lot. They’ll graze.

Personally, I have never had a rescue, so that’s only a belief. (Comment your corrections to that below.)

I do know of a 10-yr old Staffy-cross that is only fed a human diet, is not exercised as much as ours, and is terribly disobedient. No recall and she will stare and jump towards people with food on their plate because imo, her plate wasn’t enough.

It’s not for me to say that anyone is doing anything wrong. Everyone’s different and every dog learns routine. If all they have is one meal a day, they’ll get used to it.

A scheduled meal time for a dog means any food that is around is theirs. Or they’ll have a belief that they can lay claim to that food. In the case of a dog being fed a breakfast, then a dinner… by the time the last meal of the day arrives, if they’re still hungry, they’ll be whining to have the food on your plate.

On the other hand, a dog that is free-fed will be able to see that others have food, and rather than whine for some of that, they’ll know where their food is at. You can easier train a free-fed dog to leave your dinner plates alone by pointing them towards their own food bowl when they whine (which they will).

How exercise impacts the feeding routine

The more your dog exercises, the more energy they will need from their diet.

In other words, if you walk a Staffy for a half hour a day, they’ll eat hordes out of boredom. But, if you exercise your dog for an hour a day, three times a day (3 hrs of exercise daily) they’ll drink more than they do eat. They’ll still eat a power, but the drinking is what to monitor more than the food bowl.

Ours are walked between 3 to 5 miles most days in the good weather. The only time they are not is when they look shattered. It is fine to give them rest days. You do not want them afraid of a lead – thinking it represents a 5-mile walk that they feel that they can’t handle.

Tip: Give them rest days when they behave. The instant they become destructive – be it chewing their bedding, rugs, wallpaper, or wood, exercise them.

Why Water is Important to a Dogs Diet

If you’ve done any diet yourself, you’ll know that water is an appetite suppressant. If not, now you do! It’s the same for dogs. The more they drink, the less they eat.

Speaking from experience, after our Staffy’s are walked for 3 miles min. they’d rather drink than touch their food bowl. You want your Staffy to drink more than they eat. If your dog’s not drinking water, or enough of it, address that first! They should be getting around 40 ml to 60 ml of water per kg of body weight, daily.

How free feeding works with a pack of dogs

With a pack of dogs, you would expect the leader of the pack to take all of the food and leave the rest with the scraps. That’s a fallacy. Dogs, even in a pack, have their own order.

With our pack of Staffies. Flash (the senior) is the leader. Only in terms of food though. For obedience, what we say goes and the same should apply to yours. Let dogs follow the leader of the pack, but, make sure that they still understand that you are their leader’s leader.

In our case, despite Flash being the leader, we tell him when to leave things alone (like plants and other bits and bobs lying around on pavements) and in the case of the pups’ eating things on walks – like poo drops… leave – means leave.

Pups eating poop is not a sign of underfeeding

Nobody’s immune to poop laying around, whether it’s dogs’ dirt on pavements, sheep droppings in fields, or horse droppings on trails… pups munching on it is disgusting. Worse when they eat the poop and then want to give you licks! Eww.

Just because your pup will try to eat poop is not a sign that they are not having their nutrition needs met. I disagree with any dog trainer that states this to be fact. All that’s happening when dogs eat poop is that they are being inquisitive. It’s something new that seems edible (and is).

The more you tell them to leave, the more they want to eat it. It is not undernourishment. When dogs eat poop, it isn’t (necessarily) because they are underfed. It’s just inquisition. High-value and low-value treats are the solutions to this problem – eventually. It takes time.

The gist is to train your dog that the treats that you have are far more delicious than the poo they are sniffing at. You need to vary the treats they get to counteract that problem because they will get bored having the same treats constantly. That’s one of the areas in which high-value vs low-value treats help with their training. i.e. Dried dog treats vs boiled chicken bits.

Dogs eat for two reasons: Hunger and Boredom

Asides from eating things that they shouldn’t, dogs (like us at times) will eat for reasons that they shouldn’t.

If you were to feed your dog a little in the morning, then walk for five miles, you’d expect a lot to be eaten. The following day, if only a half mile was walked, the same could be eaten but less energy burnt off. That’s when obesity sets in. Eating more calories than is being burnt off.

Scheduled feeding will be fine for dogs with exercise schedules. Like, a 30-minute walk, then 23.5 hrs lazing around or just playing chase-tail in a room for entertainment.

• Scheduled feeding is best for dogs with limited exercise.
• Free feeding is best for dogs with active lifestyles.

Even in the winter, they don’t need to be told to settle down constantly. High energy breeds need to be moving, and their minds kept stimulated. You can do that with all-weather exercise for dogs so they are still burning energy, preventing them turning into destructive chewers just to entertain themselves.

For those out at work for long hours, leaving the dogs unattended, consider having someone stop by to let the dog out for a run-around.

You can combine free feeding with scheduled meal times (but I wouldn’t recommend it)

If a dog is in the house a lot, or perhaps only has a small garden to play in, they won’t burn off a lot of energy. In that case, you may decide to pay a dog walker to walk the dog for an hour a day, perhaps only once per week. That is not a lot of exercise for a Staffy.

But, if needs must, you could adapt your feeding schedule.

On their busy days, leave plenty of food out. On their lazy days, limit their food to scheduled meal times.

It is plausible, but it is also more than likely that whatever you put down, they will eat the lot… Everything! If you get the measurements wrong, they’ll eat more than they should be having. Then you’d have an obese dog that needs to be put on a weight management diet. Probably expensive, and one of the reasons that Staffies wind up in shelters.

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Is it better to train your dog to graze on food?

Probably, and that is a big probable! Look at it this way… if you’re out at work from 8 am until 6 pm, leaving the dog alone for 10hrs a day, a single feed is hardly going to cut it. They won’t graze on the food. They’d gulp it down out of boredom, then (in the case of Staffies), chew on everything else lying around.

If your bin is topable, they’ll coup it over to scavenge for leftovers in the bin bags.

Been there!

Even dogs that are trained to be free-fed will have a go at the bins – if they aren’t exercised enough. That’s why I say that dogs are scavengers – Not hunters. If the food’s down, they’ll eat it. If it’s not, they’ll wreck a bin to find scavenges of leftovers. Regardless of whether they are hungry or not. They feed out of boredom too.

Boredom and eating are two distinct traits that ought to be considered when deciding whether to free-feed your dog or schedule their meal times.

Exercise determines whether to free feed or schedule the meal times for dogs

If a dog gets plenty of exercises, they’ll do fine with free feeding. Even in packs!

If they’re in their crate most of the day, then let out in the garden to roam (rather than run), scheduled meals would likely be better just for the fact that you can monitor their eating behaviour so as to prevent them from overeating.

Dogs overeating is caused by owners overfeeding. And overfeeding is a side effect of under-exercising. The more exercise a dog gets, the more nourishment s/he needs.

… Now, when you have more than one dog, you have to consider what each dog is getting from the food bowl…

Free feeding a pack of dogs

With a single pup/dog, free feeding lets you easily know what they are going through. If dogs are overeating or undereating. With more than one, you can’t know. With loose dogs, you could have one devouring all of the food, the others getting little.

You really can’t know what every dog in a pack is eating, unless you are around to monitor them.

In our house, our pack is free-fed. However, the kitchen adjoins the living room, so we can hear when one is nibbling at a bowl of food. When you have more than one dog in the house free-feeding, you’ll learn to recognize their behaviour.

What we’ve learned through monitoring is that Codi is the grazer, despite being the biggest Staffy in the pack. Reo is the muncher – he’d rather eat a lot once per day, whereas Codi would rather graze on the kibble a few times a day.

Flash is old, and like when humans get old, their appetite goes down. He’s left to graze on the kibble, but when we know (from watching him) that he hasn’t eaten much dry food, he will be fed separately on wet food.

The pups do not get fed wet food and are trained to leave wet food alone. They can lick the slivers on the edges of the bowl. They are trained to leave Flash’s food alone and to eat their dry food instead.

The reason our pups are trained to eat dry food and leave wet food is that Flash (being 12yo with dodgy hind legs) has to have medication on occasion. You can’t have pups eating wet food with steroids in it.   

When it comes to deciding whether to free feed your Staffy (or any dog), you have to consider if you can commit to a scheduled meal time AND scheduled exercise time EVERY DAY!

You can’t train a dog to eat a half portion of a bowl. You have to determine when to put a half bowl down. If it’s before exercise, it will be devoured. If it’s after a long walk, the dog is more likely (after getting used to a designated feeding area) to drink water rather than devour the food, unless s/he is really hungry.

Free-fed dogs only eat what they need providing that they are kept active, otherwise, they will eat out of boredom.

The key is to train your dog to eat out of necessity and never out of boredom.

Bored Staffy’s are when the terrier comes out.